


The Perfect Stalker

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Category: Metro 2033 - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bleak, Discipline, Emotionally Repressed, Exhaustion, Exploration, Fear, Gen, Grave Robbers, Hunter Training, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Insanity, Post-Game(s), Quiet, Stalking, Suicide Attempt, Survival, Survival Horror, Survival Training, Teacher-Student Relationship, Training, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 19:14:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11698140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: An old stalker and his protege think about the ends of their lives.





	The Perfect Stalker

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly just a short idea about how bleak and hopeless life in the metro would probably be. Not all the details of the characters are expanded on, but you don't really need the ones I left out. I got the idea for this while playing Last Light Redux after escaping the Red Line on the railcar, figuring that caravan of refugees would probably just set up shop after Artyom butchered the marauders between them and Venice. So, after starting this at the end of October last year, I finally finished it.

 

_It was because his mom died._

_But it wasn’t her fault… no. No, it could never be his mother’s fault, she had loved him so much, not like his father, who mostly ignored him. No. Yulya had loved him so much. He loved his mom._

_“Mom,” he whispered, his throat feeling choked._

_No._

_It was his fault._

_It had to be his fault, because everything was his fault. His father was unhappy because of him. His mother was dead because of him. Everyone was annoyed by him. Really, his father, Spasatyelnaya Gorod and the whole world would be better off without him, and he knew it. He was no good to anyone._

_No._

_His fingers fumbled, sadness, fear and desperation making his hands tremble. He bit the inside of his cheek as hard as he could while he worked, even though he’d started tasting blood several minutes ago. Gospody._

_When he’d finished tying, he managed to get the other end of the rope over a ceiling-mounted pipe after a couple of tries and fastened it to an adjacent pipe. Slipping the noose over his head, he took a second to adjust it and closed his eyes before stepping off the crate._

 

“Focus,” Motya snapped, giving Edik an open-handed smack on the back of his head.

Grunting from the sting, Edik squinted hard and made his best effort to sharpen the hunting knife with more purpose. Not that he found much purpose in sharpening it; it was badly rusted, all the rubber from the grip had rotted away years ago, and it was high time he got a new one in any case. But somehow, Motya didn’t agree.

“Yes, sir,” Edik muttered, trying not to let his resentment leak into his voice. It would only earn him another clout. “But remind me please, sir, why I can’t get a better melee weapon.”

“Because if you learn with sub-par equipment, you’ll be even more effective when you prove you’re worthy of upgrades. Besides, if and when you _die_ , I won’t have wasted higher-grade materials on you.”

Mercifully, Motya was behind him now, so Edik was free to roll his eyes without rebuke. He brushed rust shavings off of the faded left leg of his camouflage trousers.

“Where are we going, sir?”

After he finished maintaining his weapons, they would be heading out on an excursion. This was routine; whenever Motya showed up with supplies from Venice for Spasatyelnaya and canned shrimp products for Sergey, he would order Edik around for a couple of hours and then lead him somewhere for practical training. Today would be no exception, and predictably Motya refused to give him a straight answer.

“You will gear up with your tactical hazard equipment.”

Edik didn’t know why he’d bothered to ask. There had only been one time that Motya had actually told him what they’d be doing. The response he’d gotten just now was the one he always got, and he fought a groan at the words “tactical hazard equipment.” Tactical hazard equipment was a fancy way of saying he’d have the pleasure of carrying all his worn-out combat gear and whatever extra items Motya decided to dump on him.

The worst part was that Motya’s words were annoyingly accurate - his weapons and garb were sub-par. The only thing that provided adequate protection was the tarpaulin NBC coveralls that he donned over his clothing, and then came his battered Kevlar body armor, his barely-functional combat boots. His tactical webbing was held together mostly with tape and string, as was his pack.

Grimacing, Edik brushed more rust powder off of himself and held out his hunting knife to be inspected.

“Sufficient.” Motya nodded and handed it back. “Gear up.”

Without a word Edik rose from the bench and went into the other room, only to sit down on one of the two makeshift beds. The other belonged to Sergey, who was down the tracks from their little ramshackle dwelling at his weapon modding stand.

Reaching under the bed (which was little more than an old metal door on cinder blocks), Edik slid two wooden crates out into the center of the small room and kicked off the comfortable homemade boots that he only wore in Spasatyelnaya Gorod. Lamenting that they were too thin and poorly made for anything other than traversing the service tunnel and mostly-blocked junctions of their “city,” he buttoned his threadbare army tunic to his neck and stood back up again.

First was his NBC coveralls: a loose hooded jumpsuit of ugly gray tarpaulin that buttoned up the front. Repairs had been made in a few places with all manner of improvised adhesives, including glue melted out of the spines of books. The tarpaulin covered his feet as well, which he then slid into his clunky black combat boots. After tying the laces securely around his ankles, Edik strapped on his body armor. Most of it was medium-grade Kevlar, though the pads on his elbows and knees were thick pieces of rubber chopped out of old tires.

After settling his flak vest and LBV onto his torso with help from more rope, he checked his pack to make sure he’d maintained it since its last use before slinging it over his shoulders. Then it was time for the most annoying part: the gas mask. Good God, did he hate that mask. It was an ancient GP-4u gas mask that Motya had scrounged up somewhere, made out of green rubber with straps that had long since been replaced with leather strips.

Edik slid the re-packed canister filter into a pouch on his web belt and tied the hose to his shoulder-strap. He’d learned to do this the hard way, after the thing not only flopped around annoyingly but had also gotten caught once and yanked his head. He put the cord over the back of his head and tucked it under the hood of his suit.

Edik left the little shack and walked out onto the tracks, Kalash in one hand and helmet in the other. After too many months to count of Motya’s training, he barely felt all the weight anymore.

“A raid against the nosalis pack in the flooded station today,” Motya grunted as they began walking.

“We’re joining them, sir?” Edik asked, unable to keep resentment out of his voice.

“No.” The word came as a shock and Edik almost stopped in his tracks. “They cleared one of the holes, it’s even big enough to walk through if your knees are bent.”

“We’re exploring it,” Edik guessed.

“They already did, it takes an hour to go through maybe… maybe a little longer.”

“We’re… plugging it?” he questioned. They’d done that once before with a nosalis hole in the very same station.

Again, Motya shook his head: “It leads to the surface.”

 

_Why do I waste my time on this kid?_

This thought had echoed through Motya Fedirovich’s head for the past eight and a half months. Taking Sergey’s son under his wing had been a personal favor, because Sergey was his best friend. But, _fuck,_ Edik’s presence was irritating.

Motya was a stalker by nature… he’d been a stalker since the concept of being a stalker had come into being. He’d been just 17 when the bombs fell, in the metro on his way across the city to his girlfriend’s apartment. His parents at work, his little sister in school. All his friends elsewhere that day. He’d never seen any of them again.

Strangely, though, once Motya had begun stalking, he’d stopped caring. Maybe he’d steeled himself mentally, or maybe the horrors of the surface had simply bleached his mind of any capacity for sadness or remorse. By this point in his life, approaching 42 years old and nearing the beginning of 2038, all he felt was exhaustion… most of the time. Edik annoyed him, and he longed for the days even before meeting his friend Sergey, when he’d been scavenging alone and packing his own filters.

It wasn’t even really the kid’s fault. After the first few weeks, Edik had figured out not to complain and to do as he was told well enough. Motya simply preferred solitude. Sure, it had been nice when Sergey had been watching his back, and even now he enjoyed sharing meals with the gunsmith. But up in the city’s ruins, Motya felt the need to be alone. There was no coordinating movements and plans, worrying about someone else’s noise, struggling to find hiding places that would accommodate both of them.

_So why do I put up with this kid?_

The thought didn’t go away as he slipped his PPS-88 mask onto his face and replaced his helmet. He’d need a new mask soon, the visor wasn’t cracked but it had a number of superficial scratches that made it obnoxious in certain situations. But he could ignore them for a little longer, at least. Long enough to scrounge the surface for a gas mask that was slightly better for Edik, an improvement over the one he had that must be a century old by now. Motya didn’t even remember where he’d found that damn thing, but had initially given it to Edik in the hopes that the kid would hate it so much he’d quit.

“What’s that thing on your arm, sir?” Edik asked before stretching the GP-4u over his face and starting to tie the leather straps behind his head.

“What thing?” Motya snorted, twisting his filter to make sure he’d screwed it in all the way. He stuffed his hands into his thick winter gloves and scooped up his Saiga off the ground.

“The… thing. It’s like a watch, but it’s glowing.”

He rolled his eyes and huffed impatiently through his mask: “It _is_ a watch. Just a better one than what I usually wear. This one charges in the sun, and times how long my filters go for. You can’t get these anymore.”

“Where did it come from?” the kid queried, accepting the goggles that would go over his mask lenses to keep him from going blind.

“When I was a stalker for the Hansa, I accepted it as part of a job payment once. The only others I’ve seen who have them are the Spartans.”

“You lived in the _Hansa?_ Why the hell did you leave?” Edik remembered after a moment to add “Sir.”

Motya just growled and shoved the sheet of rusted metal from the top of the hole, not willing to answer. Climbing up from the ground, he made no offers to help the kid ascend and wasted no time to slide the sheet back over the opening. It wasn’t an airlock, but it was all they had for now until they could come up with something better.

It took him a little bit to adjust to the light. Having been born before the war and also having been one of the craziest stalkers alive for so long, he could readily go back and forth between sunlight and pitch darkness virtually without trouble. He’d spent too much time up here to be weakened by the brightness.

He’d never really seen this part of Moscow on his post-war excursions, but he didn’t need his screaming dosimeter to tell him this area had been critically near one of the blasts. The buildings around them were almost totally flattened, just piles of rubble with the occasional crumpled wall poking up every now and again. There wasn’t any real cover to be had, but the absence of tall structures meant that there wouldn’t be any demons around. The lack of intact shelters meant there probably wouldn’t be too many mutants around at all, really; maybe an occasional lurker, but they never came out during the day like this.

That didn’t mean they could afford to be reckless, though. Crouching low to the ground, Motya and Edik began picking their way through the debris. Their boots crunched softly in the gray snow, drowned out by the wind around their heads. Other than that, the stillness of it all was intoxicating. Motya always felt relieved to return to the surface, despite the fact that it would kill him without a second thought. Even after more than three decades underground, he still never felt fully comfortable in the metro.

It was different for the others, though. Especially people like Edik. They’d been born underground, without the sun or any chance at real safety and warmth. Most of them were afraid of wide open spaces like this, and had such weak eyes that they relied almost entirely on their hearing and sense of direction to traverse unlit passages.

Motya wasn’t quite as adept. His senses were perfectly sharp, despite his advanced age, but he still needed his eyes to be of any use. So he made deals with the gangsters in Tretyakovskaya to get his hands on very rare and expensive drugs, which he paid back with things from the surface that they wanted. These drugs altered his frame of mind to take away the fear (not that he was afraid of much these days), but also blew his pupils as far as they’d go so that he could see better.

Up in the daylight, there was no fear as he and his young protege crept along in a near-silent scuttle through the ruins. The thing Motya dreaded most was that he would die underground, actually. No matter how slow and torturous, even cracking his mask and suffocating on the thick dust of fallout from the frigid air, he wanted to meet his end up top, where he’d been born. As a stalker, and as a man who’d been alive for the end of the world, there would be no other fitting demise for Tarovenko Matvey Fedirovich.

 

So, they were more or less scouting out this area around the hole that had been cleaned out. Not really looking for anything specific, but keeping an eye out just the same. Given that the rusted-out car shells hadn’t been stripped at all for whatever salvage they could offer, they were the first humans in decades to explore this part of Moscow’s grave.

Edik’s dosimeter was rattling on his belt. He’d worried that it would attract the attention of unfriendly things, but Motya had bluntly explained that any monsters on the surface would smell them coming long before they were within line of sight. If they got eaten, they got eaten, and that would pretty much be all there was to it unless they could defend themselves or run fast enough. Even for such a veteran stalker as Motya, that was still very unlikely to work out in their favor.

The world for Edik right now was stained deep brown - the goggles over his lenses were made from old bottles, but even so it was still bright enough to be uncomfortable. It was interesting, though. The wind blew the falling flakes of snow at angles, melting down his goggles in tiny drops. He’d never seen anything like it before, and it made Motya’s odd obsession with the surface a little more clear. There was a strange difference in reality that broke off from each other when one crossed from the metro to the open lands atop it. It seemed too big to him, but he was inexplicably mesmerized by it at the same time.

“Mapping doesn’t mean we can’t still be useful,” Motya told him quietly. He could do that because his mask actually had a voice diaphragm; Edik’s didn’t, so he was basically mute while he was training with Motya. “Salvage this car.”

Ah, a “practical” test. The grizzled stalker often asked a series of random questions to see if Edik remembered what he’d been taught, but once in awhile Motya would have him perform some task to show that his real-world skills were up to the challenge. Edik liked the practical tests better. He was very good with his hands, like Sergey, but words usually failed him.

Grateful to be doing something that actually had a point, Edik wasted no time pulling his old knife from his belt. He glanced around to make sure they were alone, then set to work, cramming his pack and LBV with all manner of parts that could be used for repairs of critical systems at Spasatyelnaya Gorod - electrical wires, plastic fluid containers, gears, pipes, a cassette deck from the dash that could maybe be used to entertain people if it wasn’t too busted up. Diodes. Small light bulbs. Cloth from the seats that could be used to patch clothes and boots. Tires, which could be used to tread home-made footwear or as rugged protective pads for elbows, knees and shoulders.

Then, Edik looked into the back seat of the car.

He swallowed hard. A little doll on the floor - it even still had hair and a bleached-out dress. That meant there had been a child, a little girl, who’d died in this car when the bombs fell. They were too close to one of the craters for it to be otherwise. But at least, from what Edik had heard from the old-timers like Sergey and Motya, this close to the blast would’ve been an instant and painless death. Small mercies for that poor girl.

But, some little child, especially a refugee from Kuznetsky Most who had nothing, would appreciate it. So he was forced to toss that in with the rest of the loot.

Climbing back out from the now-stripped car, Edik looked at Motya and not for the first time wished his stupid mask would let him communicate. But to his surprise, the stalker’s dark eyes had rough sympathy (he’d never seen that from Motya, _ever_ ) and he only nodded. He’d seen, and he’d understood.

The whole thing sparked something in Edik. He hadn’t really encountered a, well, _human_ side of Motya before. The man was blunt and honest, but also cold and harsh unless something pissed him off enough to send him into an inferno of rage. But clearly the old stalker understood that sort of regret… well, of course he would, Edik remembered. He’d been old enough to remember a safer and cleaner world, where no-one went hungry or got eaten by monsters underground.

Then it vanished an instant later, and Motya was all business again: “We’ve been up here too long, any more and we’ll get cooked. Let’s head back for some stew, eh?”

The pair picked their way back through the rubble and climbed down into the nosalis hole, replacing the metal sheet again. After the surface, Edik was startled by the darkness for a moment before he realized he still had on the goggles. He pulled them to hang by the strap from his neck instead, and now his vision was back to normal.

Back at Spasatyelnaya, they made sure to clean out their combat gear and Edik’s load of salvage before decontaminating their NBC suits. There was a weird shining moss that grew inside the pipes here, and somehow it had been accidentally discovered that the unusual flora could be mashed into a paste that was very good for getting contamination off of clothing, objects, and even human skin. The moss was readily farmed there, and as it could only be found in their little claim over the world, traders from the Hanza had been known to pay handsomely for some of this miracle-goo.

Between trading with the Hanza and maintaining a sort of symbiosis with Venice (Spasatyelnaya and Tretyakovskaya exchanged food products and helped each other not to get absorbed into the Ring), the improvised “city” had been shaping up into a decent living space for the last couple of years. They didn’t have any resident stalkers (Motya came from Venice so he didn’t count), but eventually they’d have one in Edik assuming he survived his training.

“You know the drill,” Motya grunted to him once everything had been sorted and cleaned. “Go reflect.”

Edik was always forced to do this after each session. It was actually at Sergey’s insistence, but Motya always made him do it anyway: to go sit on his bed and think about what he’d done that made him the perfect stalker.

 

_Edik woke up coughing and crying. His neck really hurt, and there were spots in his eyes. His threadbare underwear felt suspiciously damp, too. If he was where he thought he was, there was no way he could possibly be more miserable right now._

_Well, that actually turned out not to be true, because suddenly a rough palm smacked him across the face and an angry voice screamed: “WHAT THE_ FUCK _DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!”_

_Edik couldn’t answer through the ugly sobs and hacking expulsions, lying on his back like an animal about to be gutted. His whole body shook and Motya hit him again several times, but he was helpless to defend himself or even look at Sergey’s old friend._

_“Get up!” Motya snapped, wrenching him to his feet by the collar of his jacket._

_It took a moment for him to stand on his own, and he was still whimpering through tears as his face burned with shame. He couldn’t ever remember feeling so humiliated. Edik had barely gotten his balance when the stalker wrenched him out of the shack. Not knowing what else to do, he obediently stumbled along, sniffing and whining and occasionally still coughing._

_“Seryozha, hey! Seryozha Borisovich!”_

_“Motya?” came the reply to Edik’s left. He couldn’t see through the blur of moisture, but knowing his father was there still filled him with dread. “What’s going on?”_

_“The little shit was trying to off himself. Lucky I came looking for you just now… if I thought it would help, I’d be kicking the shit out of him right now.”_

_“He what? Bozhye moy… thank you for not kicking him.”_

_“Hmph.” Motya finally let go of Edik’s clothes. “Go on,_ durak. _Explain yourself.”_

_Edik wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his jacket like a child, still shaking. “I don’t want to be alive,” he mumbled. His voice was trembling, which only made him feel more wretched. “And there’s no reason… nobody needs me.”_

_Finally raising his head, he saw Sergey and Motya exchange a very long look._

_“That’s not true,” Sergey finally sighed, shaking his head. He folded his hands on the counter of his weaponsmithing booth and closed his eyes briefly. “This life we have… we’ll never get our world back, and it’s stupid to think there’s any hope down here. If you really want to die I can’t stop you, and I’ll understand… but there is something you can do to be useful, Edik. Spasatyelnaya Gorod needs a stalker, and you'd be perfect.”_

_“But…”_

_“Motya is too far if we need anything in a hurry. And the only stalkers who aren’t suicidal are simply crazy. It will almost certainly shorten your life by a lot, but you’ll be helping us while you’re here. Isn’t that what you need?”_

_“I… yeah,” he nodded. “Okay.”_

_Looks like he’d be one of those daredevils now, dragging items from up top down into their lonely little world. But at least he had something to fill up his time until the end, now._

**Author's Note:**

> I decided not to moderate the comments on this one, because it seems to scare people off who would otherwise say something. Feedback and kudos are much appreciated, and if anyone actually likes this story and wants me to expand on it a little, feel free to ask.


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